Anne Conway was the most rigorous vitalist critic of Cartesian mechanism.

Evidence

Anne Conway’s vitalism was an influential reaction against the ideas of the mechanists. She was well versed in and sharply critical of the ideas of her adversaries, Descartes, Hobbes, and the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632–1677), as well as her teachers and friends, More and Cudworth. Ritter, mistaking the work of Conway for that of Van Helmont, saw the author of the Principles as carrying out a wide-ranging battle against the Cartesian philosophy of dualism and against the basis of mechanical physics in general. Of the two vitalists, Conway had a far more rigorous and critical, and less enthusiastic, mind than Van Helmont. For these reasons, as well as for the compatibility of her ideas with his own, Leibniz found her work more “extraordinary” and less “paradoxical” than that of Van Helmont. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 971

Categorization

• QUESTION: A woman philosopher out-critiquing her male vitalist counterparts on mechanism invites more inquiry into why she is marginal in the standard history.
• XREF: connects to: Vitalists collapsed Cartesian mind-matter dualism into a monistic union — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 932; Anne Conway proposed monism whereby body is condensed spirit and spirit is volatile body — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 950; Leibniz’s conception of matter as dormant monads echoed Van Helmont’s and Conway’s organicism. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 989

Broader Connections

• Leibniz’s conception of matter as dormant monads echoed Van Helmont’s and Conway’s organicism. #corroborates (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 989